How Many YearsMy Careless Love?
by Nails For Your Crucifix
Summary: Just a Dark Tower Fic. A man man in a desert we all know very well reflects on The Tower. My thoughts on who some people are and what the tower is. Please r/r. It would be greatly appreciated.


Please forgive me for this horrible bastardization of the characters created by Mr. Stephen King. These are just my ideas of who certain people are and what the tower is. Also some stuff from Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came" Forgive me on both accounts but I like it. So please forgive me and R/R when you finish reading. It is pretty short.  
  
How Many Years Ago My Careless Love?  
  
It had been a good many weeks, possibly months, since he had started his journey. His journey had actually started very many years ago but that didn't matter. That entire part of his life was hazy, like the soothing pink cloud of the Wizards Glass. It had been many years since he had last glimpsed it but it felt like yesterday. It was difficult to tell the way that time seemed to run together now. How many years had it been since he had held his lover in his arms or felt her long golden hair between his fingers? How long had it been since his first true battle or the one in Tull where he had not spared a soul. How many years had it been since his meeting with Marten in the emerald castle of Oz. Or had that not happened yet? As I said before and, as he knew, time ran together these days. He turned away from the fire that set his lined face and specks of graying hairs ablaze with orange light and faced the horizon. The full moon could be seen in all it's glory as the stars danced around it while they pierced the darkness of the night sky and the desert wind. He drew his knees close to his chest and looked past the horizon to infinity.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The pictures flashed before him and each stopped only a moment before moving on and letting him see the rest of his life both what had passed and what had not yet happened. They moved so fast that he could not recollect each incident. He only saw a heap of broken images.  
  
Pictures flashed past him of Susan as the town of Hambry burned her at the stake what felt like lifetimes ago and his face as he was her through the wizards glass, an expression of pure horror. That too dissipated like the others and gave way to the picture of his mother crumpled at his feet with the smoking revolver in his hand when he was possibly fifteen. Cuthbert and Alain stood behind her with shocked expressions that were not their own and Marten stood behind them as a wiry smile crossed his face. The young child he used to be followed him into the courtyard where he saw a pair of ruby shoes and a gate with thirteen bars the colors of Maerlyn's Rainbow. When the gates parted, he saw not the emerald castle of Oz, but a desolate wasteland alive with flames. He saw five large doors looming over the horizon like giants ready to strike him down. Their gold letters and intricate filigree stood out in the forms of demonic eyes that followed him through the vast expanses of time. He knew those words on each door so well. He recognized the middle door though he had never seen in before. It was constructed of black obsidian and was unadorned except for vermilion calligraphic letters that read, The Tower. That picture stayed with him as the door opened with a loud creek and he saw the building between two mountains that dwarfed all else around it by comparison. It was a single turret of brown stone surrounded by all those of his past, present and future; all whom he had known or would know throughout his life.  
  
Then darkness fell upon the land casting everything into the black of night. Lightening illuminated the sky but one could only see the river of blood that was the rose field beneath the tower that composed his life and his journeys. Not see? because of night perhaps. The lightening that had illuminated the valley left the tower in darkness, almost as if it had never been there.  
  
Not hear? When noise was everywhere! It tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventures my peers, -- How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! One moment knelled the woe of years.  
  
And lightening stuck again; catching the valley and setting it ablaze in orange light, though the flames failed to touch him. He could see nothing but his peers, not the tower, not the mountains around him and not the door he had come through. It was as if none of them had been there to begin with, as if the tower were purely symbolic as he had once believed. It was as if it were nothing but a journey.  
  
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."  
  
They began to close in on him, whispering of his past, wanting to know his story of what had happened after he had left them. They wanted to hear the story of how the young Roland of Gilead had gone on a search to find his tower and what he now thought of it.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
He was taken from his vision by the sun rising over the desert sand and the embers from the night before long dead. It was time he moved on to finish what needed to be finished. At that, he pulled the cowl over his head and continued on his way. He took out his pack of tarot cards and shuffled through them stopping on three particular ones and smiling. The wind rustled the sand under his feet and his black cassock billowed like a cloud of smoke behind him. The quiet tune of "Careless Love" danced playfully on his lips at such sweet memories of his past. And, that too, was carried away by the wind into the sunrise.  
  
The End  
  
Well what did you think about the end. I like it personally. Please review. It's that little button in the corner of your screen. 


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